This morning Jazz highlighted some of the protests that are planned around the inauguration but perhaps the most significant protest won’t be who shows up but who doesn’t. From the Washington Post:

There are now more than 50 House Democrats — 52, at last count — who have declared that they will not attend the inauguration on Capitol Hill this week. The number rose sharply after Trump tweeted Saturdaythat Lewis (D) is “all talk, talk, talk” and should “finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities.”

Rep. Karen Bass made her decision about attending by putting it to a vote on Twitter.

After receiving an overwhelming response on the twitter poll, I've decided not to attend the inauguration of President-elect Trump. pic.twitter.com/ig4kFn0GGH

National Review points out that this is not the first time Rep. Lewis and members of the Congressional Black Caucus have decided to skip the inauguration of a Republican president. The same thing happened when George W. Bush was inaugurated. From a 2001 Washington Post story:

Some members of the Black Caucus decided to boycott Inauguration Day; John Lewis, for instance, spent the day in his Atlanta district. He thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush’s swearing-in because he doesn’t believe Bush is the true elected president.

I expect the tally of Democrats staying home will continue to increase over the next couple of days and could even hit triple-digits by Friday. Here’s Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez explaining why he won’t attend:

]]>Scarborough warns Trump: You can’t fight this many battles at oncehttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/16/scarborough-warns-trump-you-cant-fight-this-many-battles-at-once/
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 00:01:10 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3939728"There is no message discipline and there has to be because it matters."

Via RCP, it’s always fun when Trump’s friends try to advise him through their TV shows, especially when they’re being critical. Er, is there another Friend of Donald in media who uses his or her platform to criticize him? Maybe O’Reilly, very occasionally?

I’m torn between agreeing here and wondering what would have to happen for Trump to conclude “I’m alienating too many people.” What price has he ever paid for counterpunching everyone who’s taken a shot at him? He’s a billionaire who just got elected president. Taking on all comers seems to be working out okay for him. Scarborough’s point is that a politician can’t afford to anger too many different constituencies at once, especially when he’s making high-risk moves on policy. He’s going to need public support, for instance, if/when we end up in a trade war with Germany over the tariffs Trump wants to slap on cars built abroad. Every time he squabbles with a John Lewis or takes some weird shot at U.S. intelligence about Nazi Germany, he risks worrying or pissing off some voter needlessly who might otherwise be in his corner. And it’s not like he’s starting with sky-high approval: Gallup has him at 40/55 today. People are probably suspending their personal misgivings about him for the moment to give him a chance on policy, on the theory — which prevailed on Election Day — that in the end they don’t much care if he’s thin-skinned or corrupt so long as he really does find a way to bring back jobs and make America great again. But because of their misgivings, they may also give him less time to show results than they would a president whom they like better. It’s like any employer/employee relationship. The employee who’s constantly arguing with people is worth keeping so long as he’s bringing in clients, but as soon as business dries up, the knives are out.

Like I say, though: What would have to happen to get Trump to change his behavior and pass on counterattacking the next time someone like Lewis questions his legitimacy? Scarborough imagines his polling falling into the 20s if this keeps up. Would that do it? Because you know what he and his fans are likely to say: “The polls lie,” and even if it’s true that his numbers are momentarily bad, the rebound is right around the corner. There’s no reason to think fading polls would do much to make congressional Republicans tough on him either. Between his popularity among the grassroots right and his willingness to attack his enemies in the media, House and Senate GOPers seem terrified of him. They’re already shrugging off his dubious plan to eliminate his business conflicts of interest so as not to antagonize him. His numbers would need to get awfully bad, perhaps implausibly so, to embolden Ryan and McConnell knowing that the GOP has a favorable map in the midterms and that they’re all but certain to retain their majorities no matter what happens. Besides, the reason congressional Republicans held off on opposing Trump as a candidate isn’t because they feared he’d be hugely popular nationally. They held off because, again, they feared being attacked by him personally and, more importantly, because they knew there are enough diehard Trumpers out there within the GOP to destroy the party’s chances if they boycotted an election en masse over how the party has treated him. That’s why Trump wasn’t deposed at the convention last year. Even if 85 percent of the party’s voters could have been convinced to support a replacement nominee, having that last 15 percent stay home in anger would have guaranteed defeat. They made the calculation that they were better off holding on to those 15 percent by keeping Trump as nominee in the hope that the other 85 percent would tolerate him. And they were right.

It’ll be the same dynamic two years from now. Even if he alienates everyone and his approval is at 27 percent, that 27 percent will represent a giant chunk of the Republican base. If you’re Paul Ryan and you’re weighing whether to oppose Trump on a major policy initiative, like infrastructure, what’s the bigger gamble? That angry Trump fans will stay home if you screw their leader by tanking one of his big projects in the House or that the rest of the party will stay home if you sign off on his plan and hope for the best? Realistically, either Trump’s policies will work out well enough and the party will head into the midterms in decent shape — here’s hoping — or things will go south and the party will stick by him anyway in the tremulous expectation that the map will protect them in 2018. Only if they suffer actual losses that November will he change his M.O. Maybe.

In lieu of an exit question, read this piece at the Daily Wire about why huge tariffs on German cars … might not work out so well.

Is “the right” really the question, or is it a question of responding right? After being called illegitimate by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Sean Spicer tells CBS This Morning, Donald Trump had every right to respond to the accusation, as Trump did on Twitter. Lewis is an “icon” on civil rights, but if he’s not civil in politics, then he should expect a response in kind:

“I think John Lewis is an icon in both civil and voting rights,” he said. “That’s why I think his comments were disappointing. John Lewis, more than anybody, understands the need to enfranchise people, to get them out to vote and when he makes a comment about the illegitimacy of an election and the illegitimacy of the president, I think that really undermines the work that John Lewis has done because he’s been such a champion and a hero of voting rights and working to get more people to vote.”

Spicer added, “The president-elect has a right, as he’s done over and over again, of fighting back and making sure that he shows that he’s not going to sit back and take attacks without responding.”

“Was that necessary?” Charlie Rose asks, and that’s the real question here — for both men. I agree with Spicer about Trump’s right to respond, but that didn’t make the response right, and certainly didn’t make it effective. I also agree with Spicer’s decision to defend it in this manner too, however little it will help. Much of the media coverage yesterday cast this as an attack by Trump on a “civil-rights icon,” as Spicer put it, but in reality it was a counterattack to an opposition figure making an attack that ten weeks ago Lewis and his party thought was the ne plus ultra of superbad for America. At least Rose gets that sequence correct in his question to Spicer. Just because someone is a legitimate hero — as Lewis certainly was in the civil-rights movement — doesn’t mean they’re always right, and certainly doesn’t mean people can’t counter attacks and criticize them as part of engaging in the public sphere.

On the other hand, this looks like a pure trap by the Democrats, one into which Trump blithely walked. They know that Trump can’t help but respond with personal-tinged attacks when he’s criticized in public, so they put their civil-rights icon on stage to attack Trump’s illegitimacy on the weekend before Martin Luther King Day. All that’s missing is Admiral Akbar spotting the Imperial forces swarming around the Death Star — and yet Trump didn’t see it coming. Instead of pointing out the continuing Democratic hypocrisy on election and legitimacy, Trump attacked Lewis personally. Voila! Democrats got the media narrative they wanted coming into MLK Day, and the media got the excuse they needed to put Team Trump on the defensive.

Joe Manchin seems to be emerging as the voice of reason in the post-election period. In his appearance on Face The Nation, the Senator from West Virginia said both men need to work on their people skills in order to work on the people’s business over the next four years. He criticized Lewis in the manner that Trump should have used, pointing out that all of the Democratic stone-throwing over the election is giving Russia exactly what they wanted in the first place:

“I’ve got the utmost respect for Congressman Lewis. He’s an icon, if you will,” Manchin told CBS’ John Dickerson. “I just think that was uncalled for. I just wish that rhetoric would tone down from both back and forth.”

Lewis had said last week he doesn’t view Trump as a “legitimate” president, nor does he look forward to working with the president-elect once he enters office.

The “bickering going on back and forth” between Lewis and Trump makes the U.S. look weaker to its allies, Manchin said.

“We’re bigger than this, and we’re going to show them we’re not going to change and not going to alter how we work and function as Congress, as a government and the United States of America,” he added, describing such bickering as “non-productive.”

Since his new boss is the most famous Birther on the planet, you might have thought Reince’s spin on Lewis would have been more savvy. “Donald Trump isn’t going to let potshots taken by the other party stop him from making America great again. John Lewis can say whatever he wants; we’re willing to work with him or anyone else who wants to improve the lives of the American people.” Something like that. Instead he resorts to treating questions about a president’s legitimacy as dirty pool, and predictably has no real response when Stephanopoulos throws the birth-certificate stuff in his face. Birtherism, after all, made Trump as a political force in 2011. Questioning Obama’s legitimacy was the first and maybe still defining expression of his “political incorrectness.” Probably the only reason Mitt Romney agreed to appear with him in 2012 and accept his endorsement is because he feared that snubbing the Birther-in-chief would piss off the populist right, who were already suspicious of Romney’s right-wing cred. For some, only a RINO who’s unwilling to fight with every weapon available would concede the fact of Obama’s Hawaiian birthplace.

And it’s not just Trump. Doubting Obama’s natural-born status has been a mainstream position within the broader GOP for years. NBC re-polled the question just last summer:

A first look reveals significant and surprising differences between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to their beliefs about Obama’s birthplace.

While more than eight in 10 Democrats agreed with the claim, far more Republicans disagreed with the statement (41 percent) than agreed with it (27 percent). An additional 31 percent of Republicans expressed some doubts about whether Obama is a native U.S. citizen (i.e. indicating that they neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement). Only slightly more than one in four Republican voters agreed that the president was born in the United States…

In fact, the distributions are statistically indistinguishable: 40 percent of knowledgeable Republicans disagree that Obama was born in the U.S. compared to 42 percent of lower knowledge Republicans. A greater factual understanding of the political system does not diminish Republicans’ doubts about Obama’s birthplace.

Those are the numbers among Republicans generally. In a PPP poll taken last May specifically among Republicans with a favorable opinion of Trump, 59 percent thought Obama had been born outside the United States. Reince saying that “Republicans” didn’t question the legitimacy of Obama’s victory in 2008 is only true if you take him to mean Republican leaders. Among the wider party, including and especially the Republican president-elect, his legitimacy’s been questioned since basically day one.

The best Priebus can do here to try to get out of that corner is to insist that Trump gave up on believing the Birther stuff years ago. That’s not just a lie but a bad lie, enough so that Stephanopoulos was able to fact-check him about it on the spot. The whole reason Trump’s press conference last September about Obama’s birth certificate was big news was because he’d never once said to that point that he thought O was born in the United States. He tweeted his skepticism (and retweeted his fans’ skepticism) about the subject well into Obama’s second term, in fact:

How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived

In 2015, he told Megyn Kelly of O’s birth certificate, “I’m not exactly sure what he gave but he gave something called a birth certificate. I don’t know if it was or not.” As late as early 2016, he told Wolf Blitzer “Who knows?” when asked about the birth certificate before saying, “I have my own theory on Obama. Someday I’ll write a book.” Again, if you’re Reince, why stick with spin that you know can easily be debunked? When you’re asked about questioning the legitimacy of presidents, protect your boss by saying something stoic like, “Well, that’s become a bipartisan tradition now. George W. Bush’s legitimacy was questioned unfairly in 2000 because he lost the popular vote and again in 2004 because of Democratic conspiracy theories about voting in Ohio. Even Bill Clinton’s legitimacy was questioned by some because he never won a majority of the popular vote.” That answer wouldn’t have satisfied everyone, but at least they wouldn’t have made him and Trump guilty of obvious hypocrisy.

By the way, it’s not just Obama’s birthplace that’s led righties to question his legitimacy as president. Another PPP poll taken in late 2009 asked people if they thought ACORN had stolen the election for O. Fifty-two percent of Republicans said yes.

Sad morning for the media as they cope with the last weekend of the Obama presidency. Today’s star guest: The man who’ll be VP come this time next week. Mike Pence sits down with “Fox News Sunday” and “Face the Nation” to be grilled on the dossier published by BuzzFeed, the state of play on “repeal and delay” for ObamaCare, and the broader agenda for Trump’s first hundred days. Reince Priebus will face the same questions on “Meet the Press” and “This Week.” Conspicuously missing this morning is Kellyanne Conway, who’s become Trump’s most visible surrogate on Sundays. Everyone needs a day off now and then.

Among the B-list guests scheduled, the most interesting is probably outgoing CIA director John Brennan, who’ll follow Pence on “Fox News Sunday.” If there are going to be any clues offered this morning about whether intel agencies have confirmed or debunked claims in the dossier, Brennan’s the guy who’ll give them. Keep an eye too, though, on Dianne Feinstein, who’ll follow Priebus on “Meet the Press.” She’s been a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee for years and, as such, has intel that most of her colleagues aren’t privy to at any given time. She’s going to be asked about the dossier too, as well as the surprising decision by her committee to investigate some of the accusations made in it.

One other guest of note: Dem Rep. John Lewis will appear on “Meet the Press” as well. But then, you already know all about his interview and Trump’s reaction to it. The full line-up is at the AP.

Did Lewis freelance his attack on Trump’s legitimacy or was it plotted with Democratic leaders in hopes of drawing a response, to strategic ends? This is exactly the kind of headline the party may have been hoping for:

Lewis is the perfect person to lead the left’s attack on Trump since he’s a deeply partisan pol who’s typically treated as nonpartisan. He’s admired by people in both parties for his civil-rights-era activism, which gives him a degree of moral authority beyond partisanship that no one else in Congress enjoys. In practice, though, he’s been a reliable liberal as a congressman and a usefully vicious critic of Republicans for his party. The 2008 campaign ended with Lewis accusing John McCain of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” and comparing him explicitly to George Wallace. Five years later, McCain was still vowing that he’ll never forgive him for it. For the left’s purposes, “John Lewis” is basically a synecdoche for “the civil-rights movement.” Criticize him, for whatever reason and no matter how justified, and you’re criticizing social progress writ large — exactly the sort of perception Democrats want to create about Trump.

Someone on Twitter this morning speculated that Lewis’s shot at Trump and the predictable counterpunch might be a Democratic ploy to give the party a reason to boycott the inauguration en masse. Lewis has already said he’ll skip it, to protest Russian efforts to damage Hillary during the campaign. Now a second Democratic congressman, Mark Takano, has said he won’t attend — not for anything having to do with Russia but for Trump’s jabs at Lewis:

“All talk … no action” is a dumb criticism for Trump to lob at Lewis, a man who was beaten savagely more than once for marching in the 60s, once to the point of needing a plate put in his head. Ben Sasse, who appealed to Lewis last night to attend the inauguration as a tribute to the peaceful transfer of power, called Trump on that this morning too:

The smart play would have been for Trump to call Lewis out for being a partisan hack and, more importantly, for dubiously questioning Trump’s legitimacy even though no one’s showed that the Wikileaks material affected the outcome of the election. Instead he went for a lazy shot about crime and Lewis somehow being “all talk.” Trump’s gonna Trump, I guess. But it’ll work out okay for him. This is exactly right:

Trump's attacks on John Lewis are precisely what his base lives for: the evisceration of progressive taboos.

Trump’s populist image is based mostly on his willingness to slaughter the establishment’s sacred cows, and the more left-wing they are, the better. Lewis is as sacred as they come. And if this really does trigger a mass Democratic boycott of the inauguration, so much the better. It’s already clear that Trump’s not going to enjoy much bipartisan support during his presidency; between the suspicions about Russia and Democratic sour grapes about the Comey letter having unfairly tilted the election, the well has already been poisoned. That being so, the best thing he can do to shore up his national support is embrace the left’s attacks on him and count on the right to circle the wagons around him in response, essentially a mirror image of the Obama presidency. If Dems refuse to attend the inauguration, he’ll say that’s all the more reason why Republicans need to rally urgently behind him. In that sense, Trump and Lewis are yin and yang. Their mutual contempt is useful to each.

Oh, in case you’re wondering whether Trump is right about the state of Lewis’s district — which comprises most of the city of Atlanta — it’s a mixed bag. Median household income is $48,017, below the national average of $55,775, but the share of residents with a bachelor’s degree is 40.6 percent, higher than the national average of 33 percent. The crime rate is high by national standards: Atlanta’s murder rate ranked 18th out of all U.S. cities in 2015 and has risen a bit in recent years. Crime declined dramatically in the previous decade, though, in keeping with the trend across major cities nationally. (Lewis has represented the fifth district since 1987.) Typically it’s the mayor and PD that are responsible for fighting crime, not the local congressman, but tossing Atlanta’s intractable problem with crime in Lewis’s face is of a piece with Trump’s overall pitch that Washington doesn’t deliver on the things people really care about — jobs, crime, etc. We’ll see how Democrats answer. Don’t be surprised if they bring up the Central Park Five.

“I believe in forgiveness, I believe in trying to work with people,” he says, before adding that Trump is illegitimate and he won’t attend the inauguration. Okay.

Lindsey Graham used his own spot on “Meet the Press” last week to reassure Trump that Russia’s critics aren’t questioning his legitimacy as president. You can believe that Russia hacked the DNC and John Podesta to try to influence the campaign, that that’s a gravely serious offense given the stakes, and that Trump would have won anyway because, in the end, the Russia/Wikileaks stuff didn’t matter that much. Graham’s calculation was that Trump would feel more comfortable blaming Russia for the hacks himself if he didn’t think doing so would undermine his own authority as president. And that calculation may have worked: Trump did in fact finally blame Russia at Wednesday’s press conference.

But now Democrats have evidently decided to go all-in on delegitimizing him over Russia, first with Brian Fallon and here with the much more prominent Lewis. Big-name Dems have mostly held off until now on squarely accusing Trump of having won because of Russia’s help; the fact that two of them are suddenly saying this today makes me wonder if there’s a new coordinated messaging plan at work. It would make sense too that that would involve Lewis, as he’s the Democrats’ go-to guy when they need extra moral authority for their position on something by dint of his civil-rights-era activism. It may be that Lewis’s statement is a cue to the rest of the party to go ahead and start overtly questioning Trump’s right to be president in their own statements.

It’s going to drive Trump nuts and possibly bait him into attacking Lewis on Twitter, which Dems will naturally use to call Trump a racist who doesn’t care about civil rights. The more important question is what it’ll do to his Russia policy if suddenly half the people in Congress are all but accusing him of having been installed as president by Putin. Does that force him to get tough with Putin, on the theory that he needs to prove his independence from Moscow, or does it give him more freedom to make nice with Putin? After all, the more Democrats attack Trump over Russia, the more the right will come to view Russia policy as a wholly partisan issue, with Trump’s position to be defended at all costs. That’s exactly what Graham was afraid of, in fact — by backing up Trump’s claims to legitimacy, he hoped to nudge him towards be more hawkish on Russia. Now, with Democrats attacking and Trump aware that he can count on Republicans to back him up no matter what? Who knows.

Good catch by the Weekly Standard, by the way, in remembering that Lewis also questioned George W. Bush’s legitimacy after the 2000 election. No one would dare criticize Lewis that’s to the left of, say, John Kasich, which includes virtually the entirety of the media. Why not smear a Republican or two if you’re him?

]]>NAACP: Sessions is ‘unfit to serve’ as Attorney Generalhttps://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/11/naacp-sessions-is-unfit-to-serve-as-attorney-general/
Wed, 11 Jan 2017 18:01:54 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3939103"...he lacks the judgment and temperament to serve effectively as Attorney General of the United States."

On the second day of confirmation hearings for Senator Jeff Sessions, NAACP President and CEO Cornell Brooks testified that Sessions was “unfit” to serve as Attorney General. “The NAACP firmly believes that Senator Sessions is unfit to serve as Attorney General,” Brooks said. The Associated Press has more:

“We take no pleasure in stating that, in the view of the NAACP, Senator Sessions’ record conclusively demonstrates that he lacks the judgment and temperament to serve effectively as Attorney General of the United States,” Brooks said, saying the senator “evinces a clear disregard, disrespect, and even disdain for the civil and human rights of racial and ethnic minorities, women, the disabled, and others who suffer from discrimination in this country. ”

Sessions on Tuesday called those accusations “damnably false.”

“It wasn’t accurate then,” Sessions said. “It isn’t accurate now.”

By most accounts, day one of Sessions’ confirmation hearing went relatively smoothly. Politico described Tuesday’s hearing as a “lovefest” in which even some Democrats expressed their respect for Sessions:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut started out his questioning with a note of anguish.

“This experience for us is a difficult one not only because you’re a colleague, but I consider you to be a friend and someone who is well liked and respected in this body. … I know if you were sitting here you’d be pretty tough on me, maybe tougher than I’ll be on you,” Blumenthal said.

The questioning was not always milquetoast, but most of the drama came from protesters calling Sessions a racist and being wrestled out of the gallery by Capitol Police. Moments of confrontation between the questioners and the nominee were few and far between.

However the tone could shift today as Democrats plan to ramp up opposition with Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. John Lewis both testifying against Sessions. Despite this, Sessions is expected to be confirmed, as Republicans seem to be united behind his nomination.

After Democrats held what the Speaker of the House has called a fundraising stunt last week, some Republicans have recommended he file ethics charges against anyone who violated House rules. Ryan doesn’t seem ready to go there quite yet but he did tell WISN news that if Democrats try it again his response will be different:

Ryan also said House Democrats’ nearly 26-hour sit-in on the House floor last week, in which they called for a vote on gun control legislation, was “a low moment for the people’s house.”

Democrats have talked of more action when Congress returns from recess early next month, but Ryan said “we are not going to handle it the same way.”

He did not reveal specifics about how it would be handled differently.

“We will not take this,” he said. “We will not tolerate this.”

The Hill reports that Ryan chose not to have Democrats removed from the House floor last week because he had heard that was exactly what Democrats were hoping would happen:

In a separate radio interview that aired Monday, Ryan said Democrats had hoped to get arrested during last week’s protest. But Republicans, cognizant of the bad optics of putting civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and other senior Democrats in handcuffs, decided to avoid a physical altercation and never called on the sergeant-at-arms to intervene.

“We got maybe an hour heads up. [Democrats] said they were hoping to get arrested and hauled off the floor. They told a number of my staff that,” Ryan told WGTD radio in Wisconsin.

Ryan added, “I’m disappointed that my colleagues believed that they could do this to our institution that we all care about.”

Speaker Ryan was put in an impossible situation by Democrats who were clearly hoping he would walk into a trap set for him. Had he cleared the House, Democrats would have turned an argument over a failed gun control bill into an argument over race and civil rights.

Tough talk aside, it’s hard to see how anything about the underlying dynamic has changed. So long as Rep. John Lewis is willing to behave as if this is a continuation of his march across the Edmund Pettus bridge, it’s to Democrats’ benefit to break the rules again, as many times as necessary. Any reaction by Ryan will be portrayed as a racially-charged overreach against a civil rights icon. So it’s hard to see how can Ryan ever win this showdown because whatever he does the media will ensure that he loses.

The same media that has been consistently dismayed by every government shutdown driven by Republicans was giddy over Democrats turning the House floor into an Occupy camp. Despite the clear breaking of the rules and Ryan’s restrained response, the media gave Democrats’ glowing reviews. Based on those reviews, collected in this clip by the Washington Free Beacon, you can pretty much count on there being a sequel:

Paul Ryan had harsh words for House Democrats Thursday morning, accusing them of holding a fundraising stunt that diminished the world’s oldest democracy.

At his Thursday press conference, Ryan held up printed copies of a fundraising solicitation. “House Democrats on the House floor. Your contribution will go to the DCCC,” Ryan pointed out. He continued by pointing to each fundraising box in turn, “Fifteen dollars, this one says try giving us 25 bucks, but if you want you can send us 50, a hundred, 250 dollars, 500 dollars, a thousand, because look at what we’re doing on the House floor. Send us money.”

“If this is not a political stunt then why are they trying to raise money off of this? Off of a tragedy. What they’ve called for failed in a committee in the House. The reason I call this a stunt is because they know this isn’t going anywhere. It already failed in the Senate.

“They may not like this fact but this bill couldn’t even get 50 votes in the United States Senate, let alone sixty. Why is that? Why is it that this bill failed on a bipartisan basis in committee and this bill failed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate? Because in this country we do not take away people’s constitutional right without due process. This is not just Republicans saying this. It’s groups like the ACLU who are saying this.

“But more to the point. Our focus needs to be on confronting radical extremism. Terrorism is the issue. Let me say it again, terrorism is the issue and defeating terrorism is our focus in the House. So let me be really clear. We are not going to take away the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. And we’re not going to allow publicity stunts to prevent us from doing our job.”

Ryan went on to say that the House had passed legislation regarding the Zika virus “in the face of this distraction.”

During a Q&A session that followed his comments, Ryan was asked about being shouted down by Democrats Wednesday evening and whether that kind of disrespect might set a bad precedent. “I do worry about the precedent here,” Ryan replied. “I have an obligation as the Speaker of the House to protect this institution. We are the oldest democracy in the world. We are the ballast in the world of free people. And so, when we see our democracy descend in this way, it is not a good sign. It is not a good precedent,” he added.

“Look I’ve been around, I’ve gotten protests…I’ve done the Iowa state fair, you know the soapbox. I’ve done Wisconsin recalls, so that I am used to,” Ryan said. “But on the House floor? No. On the House floor where we have rules, where we have order, where we have a system where democracy is supposed to work its way out in a deliberative, respectful way? No, I did not expect that because…I think what we did is we watched a publicity stunt, a fundraising stunt descend an institution that many of us care a great deal about.”

Wednesday night, about 12 hours in to House Democrats’ sit-in for gun control, Rep. Louie Gohmert seems to have had enough. He came to the floor and challenged Democrats after Rep. Brad Sherman said he was afraid to debate the issue. The incident was captured via cellphone video broadcast on CSPAN.

Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman stood at a microphone saying, “We should be concerned about the civil liberties aspects. There is a right to travel that the courts have found in our Constitution. There is a Second Amendment and neither of those should be taken away from an American frivolously.”

Frivolously.

It’s okay to take away constitutional rights without due process, so long as you do so with some appropriate seriousness. That’s the Democrat’s argument.

At this point, someone could be heard starting to yell off camera. Rep. Sherman continued, “I know the gentleman is afraid of what I have to say…” Then Democrats began trying to shout down the person disrupting their PR stunt, yelling slogans like “No fly, no buy.” But the disruption continued and at that point Democrats began demanding the person creating the disruption come down to the floor to “debate.”

“It appears as if the gentleman is afraid to vote and afraid to debate,” Sherman said to someone off camera. He added, “And given the weakness of his arguments and his position, his fear is well founded.” This brought a round of applause from Democrats.

Apparently that was enough for Rep. Gohmert. He approached the podium and, pointing at a poster of victims of the Orlando attack yelled, “Radical Islam killed these poor people.”

Rather than debate him as they had promised, Democrats began chanting “No fly, no buy” in an effort to shout Gohmert down. It’s impossible to hear what Gohmert says next because of the noise. Rep. Brad Sherman started to engage with Gohmert but another Democrat runs up to the microphone to stop him. Democrats didn’t want a debate.

As Democrats continued chanting, “No bill, no break” to drown Gohmert out, Rep. Scott Peters, who was holding the camera, shouted, “Why are you protecting terrorists?”

Gohmert repeated, “Radical Islam killed these people” a couple more times and then moved away from the microphone where he was surrounded by Democrats. Some conversation continued but it was too far from the camera to be heard.

Rep. Gohmert appeared on Fox News Thursday morning to describe the incident. “The Democrats had taken control of all 8 microphones…they had taken over the chamber,” Gohmert said. He continued, “It was incredible to see real American folk heroes like John Lewis, who were brutalized and stood up for civil rights, folks were there using the instruments that helped gain civil right to try to take away people’s civil rights.”

]]>“Shock” find: early Constitutional scholar called 2A “palladium of liberty”https://hotair.com/archives/2016/06/23/shock-find-early-constitutional-scholar-called-2a-palladium-of-liberty/
Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:01:47 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3910280"The right of self defense is the first law of nature"

One of the first people to ever write a study of the U.S. Constitution believed the Second Amendment had everything to do with self-defense, and not militias. St. George Tucker wrote on the issue all the way back in 1803 in his work View of the Constitution of the United States, calling the right of the people to keep and bear arms a hallmark of liberty (emphasis mine):

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most government it has been the study of rules to confirm this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color of pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

That’s going to be a disappointment to everyone saying the Second Amendment only refers to muskets and/or militias (especially those “sitting in” on the House floor). Tucker isn’t suggesting only certain people (militia members) should own weapons; he’s saying everyone has the right to own a gun (whether it’s a musket, pistol, AR-15, etc.). He may even be suggesting letting people own weapons will keep the government from using the army to attack civilians in the name of tyranny (what’s the use of a pistol if those who are attacking you are using AR-15’s).

It’s here where Tucker shows just how limited the government was supposed to be, when he compares our Second Amendment with the English law it was based on.

In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorize the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.

This shows the Founding Fathers were interested in civilians being able to protect themselves from others. Damon Root at Reason (who deserves a massive h/t for mentioning Tucker’s analysis in the first place) wrote earlier this week how Anti-Federalists were extremely concerned about losing the ability to own weapons.

For example, Anti-Federalists at the New Hampshire ratification convention wanted it made clear that, “Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” Anti-Federalists at the Massachusetts ratification convention wanted the Constitution to “be never construed…to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable, from keeping their own arms.”

Meanwhile, in the Anti-Federalist stronghold of Pennsylvania, critics at that state’s ratification convention wanted the Constitution to declare, “that the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own State, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals.”

It would be nice if more Democrats (and some Republicans) would be willing to actually read what early Americans were worried about. People like Congressmen John Lewis and Jerrold Nadler seem more willing to use histrionic rhetoric instead of actually looking at logic. Via Politico:

“How many more mothers? How many more fathers need to shed tears of grief before we do something?” Lewis continued, his voice rising in intensity. “Give us a vote. Let us vote. We came here to do our job. We came here to work.”

A short while later, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said the House “is drenched in blood and the only way we can cleanse it is if the speaker of the House allows us to vote on this legislation.”

“Every day that we don’t commit to a vote, the blood is on the leadership of this House,” Nadler added.

It’s awful whenever a mass shooting or terrorist attack happens. It’s horrific seeing family crying on TV as they try to come to grips with what happened. But gun control advocates are forgetting (whether intentionally or not) is what the nation was founded on and Tucker’s analysis of the Constitution shows how strongly the Founders believed in the right to bear arms. If Nadler, Lewis, and the rest of the Democrats don’t want to own an AR-15, that’s fine. If they want to start lobbying family members/security detail/neighbors to not own one, that’s fine too. Just don’t force the heavy hand of government to determine what thing someone can or can’t own. That’s the tyranny the Founding Fathers (specifically the Anti-Federalists) were worried about.

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) has come full circle in his astounding, American life. He came to prominence during the struggles of the 1960s as an original member of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders who risked their lives for the rights of black Americans to vote and exercise other basic rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. And last night, he led a sit-in on the floor of the US House of Representatives for the sole purpose of curtailing those same constitutionally-protected rights.

Here’s your latest update on the “Occupy Congress” efforts led by aging Baby Boomers trying to re-live their hippie days on your dime and on your time.

As of 5:55 AM the Democrats continued their demonstrations and speeches using smartphones hooked in to the Periscope app on Twitter. C-Span chose to broadcast the Periscope stream since the official cameras for the House had been shut-down by the GOP leadership when the House adjourned earlier in the morning.

Around 3:30 AM, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) held a press conference for reporters and Roll Call reported that some members of the House were curled up and sleeping in their seats:

Democrats acknowledged their efforts did not result in a vote on any gun bills but said their efforts helped elevate their cause. Hoyer said he did not have further discussions with the speaker or Sergeant at Arms about House rules on the floor and what that would mean in the future

Hoyer said there is a whip meeting on Thursday at 10 a.m. where they may discuss the next steps.

Some members were seen in their seats curled up in blankets and nodding off around 4:15 a.m.

The House formally adjourned at 3:30 AM as Speaker Ryan attempted to speak reason to the Dems:

“The chair appreciates that members will differ on matters of policy and will seek to express those differences. But the chair would hope that the business of the House could be conducted in a fashion that respects positively on the dignity and decorum of this institution.”

Isn’t that precious? He thinks he can appeal to their sense of decorum.

Meanwhile, as Mollie Hemingway at the Federalist points out some despicable hypocrisy on the part of the Democrats on this sit-in and the way the media covered a GOP protest after then-Speaker Pelosi adjourned the House without a vote they wanted:

After Republicans declared the recess and accordingly turned off the C-SPAN cameras, Democrats were furious and cried out about the unfairness of having cameras taken away from them. But in 2008, Republicans opposed a motion to adjourn before scheduling a vote to allow off-shore drilling. They refused to leave and continued to bash then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for leaving town before a vote. Democrats turned off the lights and microphones and shut off C-SPAN.

As John Bresnahan of Politico wrote at the time:

Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker’s Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers.

‘You’re not covering this, are you?’ complained one senior Democratic aide. Another called the Republicans ‘morons’ for staying on the floor.

Then they sent cops to kick reporters out. In the end, their rebellion only lasted five hours and wasn’t as helpful as the Democrats’ turn because they staged it during recess.

And speaking of the media, CNN has now replaced their insidious “Count-down Clock” with a “Count-UP Clock” to record how long the “Occupy Congress” protest has been going on.

There’s no telling why Republicans in the House aren’t proud and eager to engage the Democrats in this debate. Why not embrace the opportunity to show how Democrats are lying about the “No Fly” list and lying about the mass shootings in America that would not be prevented in any possible way by their gun control measures? Why not take this opportunity to point out the Dems’ hypocrisy on the day-to-day gun deaths of young, black men in urban areas (the districts many of these congressmen represent) that gets ignored without any comment or protest in the House? Why not take this opportunity to stand for freedom, liberty, the constitution and our God-given right to self defense?

It would be nice to see Republicans engage in that debate at some point. But, until they do, there’s only one thing we can be sure of: The Obamazation of the Democratic Party is complete. He has successfully community organized the party. At this point, the proud history of the Democrats dating back to Jefferson and Jackson has been reduced to a group of misfits resembling rejects from an Acorn protest.

]]>Democrats vow: This House sit-in will go on until one of us literally wipes with the Fifth Amendmenthttps://hotair.com/archives/2016/06/22/democrats-vow-this-house-sit-in-will-go-on-until-one-of-us-literally-wipes-with-the-fifth-amendment/
Wed, 22 Jun 2016 20:01:42 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3910227Resolve.

An update to John’s post earlier. The headline’s a joke, of course, but not much of one. As several conservatives on Twitter have marveled, what they’re really protesting here is due process for American citizens.

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Lewis said “too many of our children, too many of our sisters and brothers, our mothers and fathers, our friends, our cousins are dying by guns and we have to do something about it.”…

“We don’t have any intention of leaving anytime soon,” Lewis said…

“The House cannot operate without members following the rules of the institution, so the House has recessed subject to the call of the chair,” his spokesman AshLee Strong said in a statement…

On Wednesday, the group of lawmakers chanted from the floor: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!” and “No bill, no break!” while the House remained in recess.

Not 24 hours ago, Senate Democrats had the chance to vote on a bill that would have given them the core of what they want, namely, DOJ power to block gun purchases by anyone on a terror watch list. All they had to do was make a simple concession to due process by requiring the feds to go to court and show their work, proving to a judge within three days of the attempted purchase that the person on the list was actually dangerous. Too many innocent people have been put on watch lists erroneously to grant the federal government power to strip them of their rights with no judicial safeguard. That was the Cornyn bill; it died in the Senate, 53/47, when Democrats refused to give it the 60 votes it needed for cloture. The left killed the bill only because it provided due process to gun owners. Even the ACLU is aghast:

Our nation’s watchlisting system is error-prone and unreliable because it uses vague and overbroad criteria and secret evidence to place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names…

The government contends that it can place Americans on the No Fly List who have never been charged let alone convicted of a crime, on the basis of prediction that they nevertheless pose a threat (which is undefined) of conduct that the government concedes “may or may not occur.” Criteria like these guarantee a high risk of error and it is imperative that the watchlisting system include due process safeguards—which it does not. In the context of the No Fly List, for example, the government refuses to provide even Americans who know they are on the List with the full reasons for the placement, the basis for those reasons, and a hearing before a neutral decision-maker.

Democrats, who were very offended indeed by George W. Bush’s expansion of the surveillance state (once it was politically safe after 9/11 to feel that way), simply don’t care about the due-process objections even though the no-fly list has been held unconstitutional by a federal judge. Given the opportunity to pass legislation with Republican help that would make it harder for watch-listers to get guns, they passed for the most cynical reason — because the bill’s success would deny them a talking point they need to get their base out to vote this fall. If a bipartisan Congress agrees to “no fly, no buy (for three days at least),” that’s one less thing that Democrats have to dangle in front of skeptical progressives as a reason to turn out. They’re rather continue to let watch-listers buy guns without a hitch, knowing that if some degenerate on a list shoots up another club somewhere, Republicans will be blamed for that despite Cornyn’s best efforts. Politically “our bill or no bill” is win/win. No wonder major Democratic pols from Hillary Clinton to Bill Clinton to The One himself are all touching themselves this afternoon over this anti-constitutional grandstanding idiocy. And no wonder they’ve got John Lewis, the civil-rights hero, involved in it, to lend the stunt the veneer that it’s somehow designed to support civil rights instead of undermine them. Read CNN’s breathless report on the sit-in and Lewis’s role in it; I count exactly one skeptical line as of 3 p.m. ET and that’s a perfunctory criticism from Paul Ryan’s office. When do the Democratic fundraising e-mails go out? Or have they already?

The latest is that the Republican leadership has ordered the cameras in the House turned off to deny Democrats a media platform for their stunt. That’ll inevitably be treated as some sort of war crime even though Democrats themselves did the same thing in pulling the plug on a GOP protest back in 2008. In lieu of an exit question, meditate on this: John Lewis himself was once … erroneously included on a no-fly list. He’s effectively protesting against his own rights.

Update: Your media is deep, deep, deep in the tank.

In a gaggle of 30 reporters, every reporter asked about how "historic" the sit in was.

]]>Must we politicize the naming of US Navy vessels?https://hotair.com/archives/2016/06/18/must-we-politicize-the-naming-of-us-navy-vessels/
Sat, 18 Jun 2016 20:01:30 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3909727Of course we must

One story which didn’t receive a lot of play this week was a short lived effort in the House to regulate the naming of United States Navy ships. Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) introduced an amendment to the defense spending bill which would restrict the honor of having a ship named after you to former presidents and those who have served in the military. The amendment wound up being rejected, but it caused a bit of a stir because the Secretary of the Navy recently announced plans to name a ship after Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. Coming from a Republican you can only imagine the accusations which were flying around that one. (Washington Post)

A House Republican introduced a measure Tuesday that would prevent the U.S. Navy from naming ships after lawmakers who have not served in the military or as president.

The measure would have prevented civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis and former Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin from receiving the honor but a House committee decided to pass up the opportunity to give the measure a vote in the full House.

The naming of ships or other government facilities after lawmakers sometimes has been controversial in recent years. Lewis’s status as a civil rights icon, which the Navy cited in its announcement, could have added more tension to the issue.

“Naming this ship after John Lewis is a fitting tribute to a man who has, from his youth, been at the forefront of progressive social and human rights movements in the U.S., directly shaping both the past and future of our nation,” Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said in a statement in January.

For his part, Palazzo said that the amendment had “nothing — absolutely zero — to do with John Lewis.” That may be true, but you know that’s how the Democrats will play it. But the real question here is whether or not Congress should be getting involved in the question in the first place. The problem is that we’re dealing with a subject which, like so many other things in the military, rides entirely on tradition and not on any history of legislation or constitutional requirements. Perhaps the better question is, what’s in a name?

Personally, I have no problem with – and actually support – the idea of keeping our ship naming in the realm of those who served with honor in the military. (Presidents count by virtue of having been Commander in Chief.) Over a few hundred years of battles, there is no shortage of names of military members whose names could be enshrined on the bows of our naval vessels. But the fact is that we’ve traditionally left that up to the Secretary of the Navy and we’ve already veered away from that tradition on a number of occasions.

Ray Mabus has, in my opinion, been something of a disaster in his post. He’s been politicizing the office at every opportunity, particularly when it comes to gender roles in combat and related topics, but he’s the guy we have for the time being. He’ll be gone soon enough if Hillary loses the election, so this too shall pass, as the saying goes. We went a bit overboard when we named a ship after Cesar Chavez, who is primarily known for his union activism, but at least he was in the Navy. Still, I doubt even the most controversial name is going to cause a ship to sink.

This isn’t an easy call, but without some defining previous legislation to fall back on, I’m not sure how we tackle this question. Should Congress institute rules regarding the naming of military equipment, bases and other such honors? But at the same time I’m torn. When we open the door to having living members of the legislative branch or other famous figures put into the mix, our two parties will immediately go to war over it. (As they already seem to be doing on a small scale.) What’s next? The USS Al Franken? How about some mine sweepers named after all the Kardashians?

Here’s your oddball political story for the weekend, and one which probably wouldn’t even rise near the surface of the pool if it wasn’t in rotation on every cable news channel and most of the big newspapers. It’s a tale of mystery concerning a photograph which dates back more than four decades. It supposedly shows socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addressing a group of young people conducting a sit-in protest in Chicago. It was part of the civil rights unrest of the era and students were doing such things all over the nation. There’s one problem, though… some people are claiming that it’s not actually Sanders.

If that were true I suppose it wouldn’t be all that shocking. In a jumble of ancient photographs it’s easy to misattribute one now and again, and nobody is denying that Sanders was out there protesting during that period. But clearly it’s a bone of contention, and as people have made accusations, the Sanders campaign felt they had to answer the charges. (CNN)

Bernie Sanders’ campaign manger said Friday the campaign is “100% confident” that a well-publicized photograph showing a man leading a sit-in at the University of Chicago in 1962 was, in fact, a shot of Sanders.

Four alumni of the school told Time magazine in November that the photo does not show Sanders but rather another classmate named Bruce Rappaport. But Jeff Weaver, the Sanders aide, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday that the campaign was certain the photograph, which has been used in promotional videos and on social media, was indeed of him.

Your first response may very well be to ask… who the heck cares? It’s an ancient photo of a sit in at a Chicago protest. Maybe that one picture was of Sanders or maybe it wasn’t. Either way, he was there and getting in the mix since he was arrested for the same thing during the same period.

But apparently it’s very important to some people. One of them is the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart. He spent most of one afternoon and evening shooting out tweets linking to a recent column of his where he focused on nothing but the offending photo, insisting that the grainy picture shows a different protester entirely.

But that’s not Bernie Sanders in the photo. It is Bruce Rappaport.

Classmates of the two men started raising concerns about the discrepancy last year. According to Time, four University of Chicago alumni told the magazine in November that they believed the man to be Rappaport, also a student activist, who died in 2006. At the time of the story, the photo was still captioned as Bernie Sanders in the University of Chicago’s photo archive. But the picture’s caption has since been changed.

By the next day I saw Capehart tweeting that he had tracked down Rappaprt’s widow and some other expert and he was transcribing interviews with them. You’d think he’d finally found the missing frames of film pointed at the grassy knoll during the Kennedy assassination. This brings us back to the “who cares” aspect of the question. In an odd bit of irony, Capehart makes that same point himself if you read all the way down to the bottom of the article.

Sanders’s involvement in the civil rights movement and his commitment to equal justice are not in question. Another old picture that appears in campaign literature and video of student-activist Sanders with the university president is not in question. That most definitely is him. What’s at issue is Sanders’s misleading use of a photograph to burnish already solid credentials.

So after raising all this fuss over one photo which may or may not include Sanders during a period where everyone agrees he was present and working as an activist, Jonathan admirably shows some interest in telling the truth. But there’s another element of truth which is clearly not as interesting to the WaPo editorial board member. I brought up the issue of the John Lewis endorsement where he said Sanders wasn’t around, but that he met Hillary Clinton and her husband during those tumultuous years. I followed that up by asking him if he would care to weigh in on the fact that Lewis previously said he never met the Clintons until thirty years later. The response?

So documented history is now “bait” but an argument over a single, fifty year old photo is running news at one of the nation’s largest papers. Bernie being possibly credited for a single frame from a sit-in when he may have been at another protest event somehow tarnishes his liberal bona fides, but the fact that one of the most high profile living leaders of the civil rights movement apparently lied about the Clintons being around at all during that period is not news.

Congratulations, Secretary Clinton. You’ve got the full media press on your side now. Bernie should be knocked out of the ring in short order.

]]>https://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/13/bernie-sanders-and-that-photo/feed/73John Lewis said he knew the Clintons in the civil rights era, but he didn’t always make that claimhttps://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/11/john-lewis-said-he-knew-the-clintons-in-the-civil-rights-era-but-he-didnt-always-make-that-claim/
https://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/11/john-lewis-said-he-knew-the-clintons-in-the-civil-rights-era-but-he-didnt-always-make-that-claim/#commentsFri, 12 Feb 2016 03:01:01 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3893422Funny story...

Poor Bernie Sanders. The guy can’t seem to catch a break. First the Congressional Black Caucus mostly endorses Hillary Clinton and then none other than civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis stands up to make a speech saying how he never saw Sanders at any marches supporting black citizens. But he did see the Clintons. (The Hill)

“To be very frank, I never saw him, I never met him,” Lewis said during the CBC PAC’s endorsement.

“I chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for three years, from 1963-1966. I was involved in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the March from Selma to Montgomery … but I met Hillary Clinton, I met President Clinton.”

As he spoke, someone in the crowd could be heard repeatedly saying “uh oh” and “tell it” as Lewis made his points.

The first time I heard of Bill Clinton was in the early ’70s. I was living in Georgia, working for the Southern Poverty Law organization, when someone told me about this young, emerging leader in Arkansas who served as attorney general, then later became governor.

Just a moment ago he was talking about his work from 1963-1966 when he had never met Sanders, but had met the Clintons. But he apparently told Bill’s diarist that he’d never heard of him until the early seventies. And mind you… that’s just when he heard of him. When did they actually meet? The chapter continues.

I think I paid more attention to him at the 1988 Democratic Convention, when he was asked to introduce the presidential candidate and took up far more time than was allotted to him. After he became involved with the Democratic Leadership Council, I would run into him from time to time. But it was one of his aides, Rodney Slater, who actually introduced us in 1991 and asked me if I would support his presidency.

So he had “run into him” from time to time and was finally introduced in 1991. It’s also worth noting that there is still zero mention of Hillary. If he had known her and not her famous husband, it seems like it would have come up in the conversation by now. But back to the question of dates, I’m not a history expert and math isn’t my strong suit, but I think 1991 was considerably after the march on Selma… possibly by almost 30 years. Further, Lewis has always had his finger on the pulse of black leaders who were in tune with the history and progress of civil rights. Perhaps some of them knew Bill and Hillary instead?

Rodney gets the credit for convincing me that Bill Clinton was “the man,” when he told me all he had done in Arkansas to help change the layout of that state. In the summer of 1991, I hosted a breakfast for him in the Rayburn building. Congressmen Mike Espy and Bill Jefferson were there. The three of us were trying to convince the Democratic Black Caucus to endorse Clinton. Most Northern members didn’t know him and wasn’t very interested. Only a few members of the black Caucus came to the breakfast, but those of us there had a wonderful discussion. Several staff people came from different offices, and they all came back to me later to say how wonderful he was.

What was so striking about Bill Clinton was that here was a governor and a presidential candidate, and he actually made you feel as if he knew he needed you. He was warm, engaging, and comfortable with the African American audience. We literally began to feel he was one of us. The people there were amazed to see this white Southerner so comfortable around blacks.

We’re talking about two famous individual who Congressman Lewis clearly stated had been involved with the civil rights movement dating back to the sixties. And yet when he was introducing Bill around in 1991 the other members of the Black Caucus were “amazed” that this southern white man was so comfortable around blacks? How amazing could it be if he’d been out there working on civil rights for the past thirty years? And if his wife was such an integral part of that noble effort, wouldn’t she have even merited a mention?

Somebody might want to ask the Congressman about this if they run into him.

]]>https://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/11/john-lewis-said-he-knew-the-clintons-in-the-civil-rights-era-but-he-didnt-always-make-that-claim/feed/64John Lewis: What Obama should do now in Ferguson is, uh … declare martial lawhttps://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/14/john-lewis-what-obama-should-do-now-in-ferguson-is-uh-declare-martial-law/
https://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/14/john-lewis-what-obama-should-do-now-in-ferguson-is-uh-declare-martial-law/#commentsThu, 14 Aug 2014 18:01:23 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=641362"Federalize the Missouri National Guard to protect people as they protest..."

I understand the frame of reference. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to desegregate Central High; the Marines were sent in during the L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict to keep the peace. This idea of using troops to maintain order when racial tensions blow sky high somewhere in America isn’t out of the blue, especially for someone who participated in the civil rights movement. But this is a singularly terrible idea on a day when elements of the left and right have coalesced to criticize — ta da — the militarization of the police. The solution to cops in fatigues with heavy weapons, I’m thinking, isn’t bona fide soldiers in the streets with heavier weapons. Although one of the many nasty byproducts of having a warrior police force is that the arguments against actual military occupation start to weaken. Who would you rather take your chances with as a protester, a U.S. Marine who’s been rigorously trained and who understands there’s a fierce taboo against soldiers using violence against American citizens or a local cop who hasn’t dealt with many riots before and who’s finally getting to test out some of the impressive weapons the feds have given the force?

Martial law is also a terrible idea politically for Democrats, of course. I guarantee there were people in the White House audibly groaning as Lewis floated this rhetorical air biscuit for a lefty audience on MSNBC, knowing that it’ll put (a little) pressure on Obama to take his advice and further knowing that conservatives would have a field day turning out voters in November after O declared “martial law” in a midwestern town, even for a day. If the National Guard is sent in, the order will come from Jay Nixon, precisely because the party is eager to keep Obama far away from this. Better that he spend his time golfing than giving military orders in a situation that’s already racially inflamed.

Oh, and the reason Andrea Mitchell doesn’t press Lewis on any of this is because she’s riding along on the dumbest, lamest lefty read on Ferguson. She’s not going to rock the boat, especially at John Lewis’s expense.

]]>https://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/14/john-lewis-what-obama-should-do-now-in-ferguson-is-uh-declare-martial-law/feed/175Good news from Sheila Jackson Lee: The Constitution implies a right to health care and educationhttps://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/07/good-news-from-sheila-jackson-lee-the-constitution-implies-a-right-to-health-care-and-education/
https://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/07/good-news-from-sheila-jackson-lee-the-constitution-implies-a-right-to-health-care-and-education/#commentsTue, 07 May 2013 19:21:40 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=259225Laugh if you must but it’s no goofier than the idea that “due process” implies a substantive right to kill ...

Laugh if you must but it’s no goofier than the idea that “due process” implies a substantive right to kill a baby in the womb but not five minutes later, after it’s emerged.

Besides, Jackson Lee’s been consistent on this. Back in January 2011, right after the new Republican House majority was sworn in, she started arguing that repealing O-Care would amount to a deprivation of due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. There’s a certain ruthless logic in her reaching for the Constitution right after the Democrats’ hold on power began to slip in hopes of putting her favored programs beyond the new majority’s grasp. And now she’s doing it again, conveniently just as the media’s filling up with stories about ObamaCare’s implementation maybe turning into a “train wreck.”

Speaking on the House floor, Jackson Lee said the right to these services can be read into the Declaration of Independence, which preserves the rights of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“One might argue that education and healthcare fall into those provisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said. Jackson Lee also praised President Obama for fighting for these rights.

“I think that what should be continuously emphasized is the President’s leadership on one single point: that although healthcare was not listed per se in the Constitution, it should be a constitutional right,” she said.

How many Democrats at this point have been forced to resort to the Declaration of Independence for quasi-constitutional arguments to support O-Care because the actual Constitution doesn’t do much for them? Pelosi’s the most famous example, but John Lewis once went there too. It makes me nostalgic for the elegant simplicity of the “Commerce Clause lets us do anything we want, wingnuts” arguments before the Supreme Court ruling on the mandate last year. Friendly advice to Pelosi et al.: You can justify literally any policy, left or right, on grounds that it’s designed to enable the citizen’s “pursuit of happiness.” We should repeal Social Security and Medicare right now because eliminating payroll taxes and easing the debt burden on the public will make it easier for them to pursue their happiness. Good lord, even the “general welfare” provision in the Constitution’s preamble, as flimsy as it is as a basis for constitutional law, would at least put you in the correct document. If you’re going to try to strip Congress’s power to govern, at least make a rhetorical effort.

I can’t find video of Jackson Lee’s speech last night so here’s the video from 2011. The idea that “rights,” once granted by statute, can’t be removed constitutionally even by another duly-passed statute is true, at least, to the spirit of the Democrats’ one-way ratchet for the welfare state.

Often, I wonder how disconnected advertisers must be to craft some of the commercials that appear on TV. I’ve been known to not buy products just because the commercials that advertise them annoy me so much. Call it reverse advertising. OK, so maybe I’m not the most rational consumer if I’ll willingly forgo a quality product at a low price, but, really, is it so hard to make a compelling commercial?

U.K. retailer John Lewis proves it can be done. This is my new gold standard for TV ads:

Not coincidentally, I also happen to completely buy into the principle this little gem espouses: Better by far to give than to receive.